Lantern Slides
by ThorHammer17
Summary: Lots of chapters, very few words, and it's close to my best work. Give it a chance, and I promise you won't be disappointed.
1. I

**Kyle and Dora: Lantern Slides**

_"And in every narrative there are gaps: places where, although things happened and the characters spoke and acted and lived their lives, the story says nothing about them. It was fun to visit a few of these gaps and speculate a little on what I might see there."_

_-Philip Pullman, on "Lantern Slides", his addendum to the His Dark Materials Trilogy. _

You are in a dark room. There are several other people here, but you can't see them. You hear some shuffling, the strike of a match, and…


	2. II

Isaac's grandmothers meet in the center of Vale, almost fifty years prior to the lighting of the lighthouses. They're both bubbling over with joy and excitement, as they both have life-changing news. Kyle's mother whispers something to her companion's ear.

"Me, too," Dora's mother replies, a grin stretching from ear to ear as she embraces her friend.


	3. III

The first time Kyle and Dora meet, at age two, Dora has her hair up in pigtails, while Kyle's is short and curly. Their mothers spend most of their brief visit separating their two children, as Kyle is very interested in Dora's hair, and especially the yanking thereof.


	4. IV

Kyle develops a habit for childish nudity. His parents aren't too keen about it, and despite their best preventative efforts, Kyle is persistent, and one day does present the entire town with quite a show. This wouldn't have as embarrassing for those involved - if it hadn't been discovered that his stark adventure had been Dora's idea in the first place.


	5. V

Dora and Kyle at age five, playing in the grass as their mothers watch from the porch of Kyle's house. They are running around in the grass in circles and figure-eights, arms outstretched. The air occasionally echoes with laughter, or one of Dora's high-pitched squeals. Puffy white clouds sit motionless in the sky.


	6. VI

Kyle walks past the sanctum with his mother, and asks her what the little chapel is for.

"It's for when you feel sick, honey," his mom says.

Kyle is confused. He's been sick before, but he's never been to the sanctum.


	7. VII

Kyle sits in the corner of his room crying. He threw Dora's favorite doll into the river, and he got in big trouble when he got caught. Plus, he tried to lie about it. He rubs the seat of his pants gingerly.


	8. VIII

Dora and several of her friends are sitting in a circle outside on a blustery October day. Dora listens as one of her friends, a fiery red-head, says that Kyle is "mean and immature and a dummy."

She doesn't know what to say, so she says nothing.


	9. IX

At age nine, Kyle and Dora rush out of the doors after school (if you could call the converted inside of the sanctum a school). They're mad at each other, so Dora runs home immediately, not wanting to talk to him. Kyle goes home too, and lets his anger out there.


	10. X

Kyle, sent to his room for talking back to his father later that day. His mother tries to come upstairs and talk to him, but he tells her to go away. She does, and he doesn't say anything else to her before he falls asleep. Throughout his entire life, this will be the only thing that he ever truly regrets.


	11. XI

Loud voices of men and women in the midst of a crisis interrupt Kyle from his sleep. He gets up and wanders toward the source of the noise, his parents' bedroom. All of the village healers and the elder are around her, their bodies glowing. They pick her up to take her to the sanctum. Kyle wonders why his mom doesn't feel good.


	12. XII

Kyle sits with his dad at his mom's funeral. He wants to lean on his dad's shoulder and hug his arm, but something holds him back. It isn't the same as his mom's, and it never will be, even though his dad loves him very much. Nothing is ever the same without a mother's love.


	13. XIII

The day of Kyle's mother's funeral is the first day that Dora was not excited to put on a dress, even though it was very nice and looked like a grown-up dress. She stares at the thing, wondering why she has to wear it today, of all days.


	14. XIV

Kyle sits quietly at lunch, on a typical day in the last year of his education in Vale. He doesn't talk much anymore; his face usually has a faint shadow of sadness around it. He's still a normal boy, but he changed.


	15. XV

Kyle and Dora both get jobs after finishing their minimal education. Dora works for one of the shops, while Kyle works for his father, in the fields around the outskirts of Vale. Kyle comes home after his first day, his hands blistered and red.


	16. XVI

Kyle sees Dora for the first time in about a month since they began to work, when he goes to the shop she tends to purchase some medicinal herbs for his chronically blistered, fourteen-year-old hands. For Kyle, his old friend's smile does more than the herbs.


	17. XVII

Kyle, at home that night, dreams of his mother.

"Wake up, Kyle, you have to go, now. I will help you, so don't be afraid."

He wakes with a start, smelling smoke floating through his window. He tears his covers back, and sees Dora's house in flames.


	18. XVIII

Dora, stuck behind her door, overwhelmed by fear. She hears her parents yelling for her; she cries back, but they do not respond.


	19. XIX

Kyle runs toward Dora's first floor bedroom, having an uncharacteristically out of body experience. He pushes the back door in, and he feels a strange power overwhelming his body. Instinctively, he points his hand, now glowing white and blue, at the large piece of the fallen ceiling at the door.


	20. XX

Kyle pulls Dora away from the inferno; she looks back toward her parents' room as the roof of the house collapses.


	21. XXI

Anguish.


	22. XXII

Chaos runs rampant around Dora, who doesn't notice anything. She buries herself in Kyle's embrace. This was all a bad dream, surely. No one in town gets much sleep that night, if any.


	23. XXIII

The town elders and Kyle's father sit in the sanctum-turned-organization center, trying to handle the worst disaster in the memory of any living person. They face the mile-long agenda of Kyle's awakened Psynergy, Dora's living arrangements, clean-up, replacing Dora's father on the council, and much more; the hopelessness is evident in all of their faces.


	24. XXIV

Kyle visits Dora in the shop, where she scrubs away at the wood surfaces in an effort to distract herself, after he finishes Psynergy training. They talk for a few minutes, though the conversation is mostly casual. He smiles and waves as he says goodbye. After several days, this becomes routine.


	25. XXV

After floating around the town for two weeks, Dora stands in the doorway of Kyle's house, the only one with a spare bedroom, carrying all her remaining possessions in one small, handheld bag, feeling like a stranger in a strange land.


	26. XXVI

Dora meets Kyle outside the shop one day, in tears. At his suggestion, they take a long walk through the woods, and talk. It's beautiful in the fall. Dora smiles for the first time since the day before the fire.


	27. XXVII

A routine night at Kyle's house. Kyle and Dora do the dishes while Kyle's father brings in wood for the fire. Though rough around the edges, anyone looking in from the outside could see it for the tight-knit family it had become.


	28. XXVIII

Dora gets her first boyfriend. She comes home one day giddy with excitement. Kyle's father asks why. She's only too eager to tell. Kyle spends the rest of the evening in a bad mood, though he doesn't understand why. He tells himself that it's because he doesn't like Dora's boyfriend.


	29. XXIX

Dora's first relationship ends. She cries a little, but she recovers quickly. Kyle, on the other hand, whistles while he does the dishes – two weeks and four days, but Kyle wasn't counting.


	30. XXX

A year and a half later. Kyle and Dora sit on stumps in the back of their house, each holding a small glass of a clear liquid. Their faces are both bright-red, and their laugher just a little too loud.


	31. XXXI

Three hours later, Kyle holds back Dora's hair as she empties the night's imbibery behind a bush. Both vow the next morning never to drink mooncider again.


	32. XXXII

Dora, alone, at her parents' graves, which she visits on the same day once a year. For the first time since they died, she doesn't cry.


	33. XXXIII

Dora's eighteenth birthday. She and Kyle's father roar with laughter as Kyle tries to make a cake. It comes out a broken mess, but Dora says that she loves it anyway.


	34. XXXIV

Kyle, sitting on a stump among the turning leaves, sighs and puts his head on his hands. As has become normal, Dora occupies all of his thoughts. He is, put simply, confused.


	35. XXXV

Dora, standing on the front step of Kyle's house, blinks in confusion. She asks Kyle to repeat his question. He does.


	36. XXXVI

Dora wonders, just before she loses her breath, why her first kiss is happening on top of a roof; she is glad, years later, that it did.


	37. XXXVII

A band of traveling minstrels comes to town. Kyle and Dora attend. Her hand always seems to find a way to slip in to his when they begin to play.


	38. XXXVIII

Contentment.


	39. XXXIX

Dora and Kyle, in the middle of winter, huddle next to the fireplace. Every part of Kyle's body is cold from splitting the wood. Still, he smiles when she rests her head on his shoulder.


	40. XL

Kyle works on a metal object with his Psynergy, carving small groves into the inside. He makes one final cut before putting the object into his pocket.


	41. XLI

Kyle takes Dora on a "best of us" tour of the village – the dock, the forest, Kyle's backyard stump – but stops her as they cross the middle of the bridge on the return home. He reaches down into his pocket, and falls to one knee.


	42. XLII

During their first night of passion, Kyle slows for a moment to plant a delicate kiss on Dora's forehead. Isaac is conceived that very night.


End file.
